Huge church mobilization progress

We have also made massive progress on other areas here in church mobilization.  Our church network has continued to rapidly expand and this has enabled us to really expand our follow-up programs.

Our first year here in South Africa, Mike and Mawande wrote and taught the Faith Discovery program and the follow-up process to that program.  On the average every 6 weeks out of 30 students about 10-15 make first time commitments to follow Christ!!!  Since that time my heart has been passionate about building a “church placement” program, where after our follow-up program we can place these students into healthy local churches where they will continue to be this process for that person.

So we are very excited to announce that we have successfully implemented this new program with our current students who recently graduated.

Using software, we geocode the locations of the students’ home.  So yeah, that's where it gets a weebit technical but thankfully I have a techy savy husband who drove to all the church locations to get the correct GPS location.  Cuz that's how he rolls.

So we looked at our students in the current class and based upon where the new born-again student lived, we invited local pastors to come and meet these students during our 9 weeks program that we teach at Hope Africa.  We gave them a chance to get to know each other in a non-threatening environment.

Part of the teaching the students get is about what the scriptures teach about “church” and then we work with them to choose a good local church where they can grow.  We then follow up for 18 weeks with the student and at the same time with the churches to ensure these new relationships with the pastors and students are flourishing.  I am so excited to see these new believers placed into healthy churches!